Maud Casey - The Man Who Walked Away

The veteran bends down to help Samuel with his shoes, concentrating on the laces. “These are his laces. I am undoing his laces.”

For once, Albert discovers himself in the midst of water and he knows why his shoes are left behind on the shore. He knows how he arrived here in the bracing cold water.

The Director, his face red with the excitement of nature, asks them to close their eyes, as he tells them about the Koine Greek word for “beauty” that contains the word for “hour.”

“Close your eyes and listen,” says the Director.

“Yes,” Elizabeth says, “how interested I was the first time you told us this story.”

“Shhh,” the Director says. “ Beauty means ‘being of one’s hour,’ and you can’t be of your hour if you are talking to me.”

Albert is of this hour, his hour, with that bird and that bird and the smell of the muddy earth and the roots of the trees and the sound of the water pushing its way around the rocks. He stands there in his new pants, in the pocket of which is no train ticket to somewhere else, no train ticket he doesn’t remember purchasing. In his pockets are his hands and that’s all. He is of his hour and beauty is the rope pulling him out of the mud where he has been sinking for so long he doesn’t even know how long. It is better not to thrash. He does not thrash. He does not move at all.

“Reverence is a ringing in the soul,” the Director says. “Quiet, you will hear it.”

Albert isn’t sure if the ringing deep inside him is reverence or not. It doesn’t matter; it is as if someone has dropped a stone down into the well of him and there, after all these years, is the faint splash of water.

Ring ( shadow ring ). And then it is time for lunch. At the long table that anchors them all, Walter’s warm thigh against Albert’s on one side, Marian’s warm thigh against Albert’s on the other. Nurse Anne hovers around the table, encouraging Samuel to at least roll up the sleeves of that ridiculous coat if he refuses to take it off. “Now you’ve got today’s soup on top of this morning’s porridge,” she says. “Congratulations, you are a meal.”

“Stop fiddling with Albert’s soup spoon,” Nurse Anne says to Elizabeth, who wants to show Albert her puzzle of the funicular in Lyon. A fleeting illumination along a pitch-black road: He has been there. Has he been there?

“Lyon,” Albert says. “It seems. . it appears. . I once. .” Hadn’t he walked past the funicular in Lyon and wished that he were the sort of person who might stop and ride it?

“Yes, yes,” Elizabeth says, as though he has completed his sentence. “That’s wonderful. I have a beautiful something to show you later.”

“Samuel, you are fading,” Nurse Anne says.

“ Faded ,” Marian says, as Samuel slumps over his plate.

“I will be done soon. It is a simple test I’m conducting,” says Walter, tapping Albert’s elbow with his spoon. “The evidence is not complete.”

“I cannot hear you,” says Marian, putting her hands over her ears. “I am not hearing you.”

“A soul murder,” Walter says. “This is undoubtedly what you fear.”

“You are not listening at all,” says Marian.

Listen. All day long: the beautiful constancy of the bells. Ring ( shadow ring ). Is it time for exercises? Yes, it is. After they have returned from the creek and those who needed to have changed out of their muddy clothes—“Every one of you,” according to Nurse Anne — after it is time for lunch, they go out into the asylum courtyard, even Marian, who has decided to be brave.

“I will let the sun have its way with me,” she says.

“That means she likes you,” Walter whispers to Albert.

They line up in two rows: Elizabeth, Rachel, and Marian in the front, Albert and Walter in the back with the veteran. The Director leads and they follow, except for the veteran, who marches behind them, back and forth, back and forth, keeping an eye on the deep hole he dug in the garden until the Doctor comes out, takes him by the elbow, and escorts him inside.

Miraculously, Albert’s body obeys him as he lifts his arms, squats, stands, squats, windmills his arms.

“Not all of you are soldiers,” the Director says. “Pace yourself. You are not all soldiers like the veteran, but fitness is still the key to good citizenship.” Albert feels the muscles in his arms and his legs and his back, good citizens moving through the minutes and the hours.

Ring ( shadow, ring ). And then it is time to dig in the garden, to gently pull without tearing the kale and the lettuce they will eat later for dinner, to put it in the basket, to smell the tomatoes on the vine for ripeness, to not step on the beans, to spread the manure someone has brought for fertilizer. “This is how it’s done,” says the Director, using his rake, while the veteran, who has returned, digs in his hole. “That is not for eating, Samuel,” as Samuel puts manure on his tongue.

Elizabeth holds up her hands, dirt caking her nails. “Divine,” she says.

“Certainly,” Albert says. He wants to be friendly to this woman who is being friendly to him, but it is also true — her dirt-caked nails, they are divine. That he pulls a head of lettuce up from the rich, moist earth and smells its roots; that he does not disappear; that he is here.

“Here,” Elizabeth says. “Look here. This is it. The beautiful thing I wanted to show you.” She points to a bone with feathers pasted on it, lying on a bench. “My wing.”

Sisters have a way of finding their brothers, even brothers who have been turned into birds , his father said when Albert asked him how the sister found the swan brothers in his father’s story. But even after his father comforted him, Darling boy, the prince with one swan arm made a life for himself , Albert felt them. He feels them now, underneath the tick-tock of the day, his beautiful feathers rippling uselessly.

“I will not cry,” he tells Elizabeth, because suddenly he feels certain he will. Looking at the wing, its feathers plucked, suddenly he is afraid again.

“Why would you? I’ve fixed it. I’ve put all the feathers back on,” Elizabeth says, looking as though she might cry too. “It is beautiful.”

“It is,” Albert says. Darling boy, don’t cry. “It is beautiful,” he says, but didn’t she see that was the problem? The beauty of one’s hour made the pain of leaving it that much worse. “It is, but. .”

“Come with me,” Nurse Anne says, though the basket Marian is carrying is not yet filled. She takes Albert by the arm, her voice soft as the moss he put in his shoes. Here is your room, yes, right here, here you are, right here. “They can finish without us.”

“Let’s wash your feet,” Nurse Anne whispers, leading him inside, leading him down the hall to his room. She sits him in the chair, then picks up his old mended shoes from the corner, letting them dangle from the tips of her fingers. She reaches inside one of them and pulls out the moss stuffed into the toes. “Very clever,” she says.

“My feet are always clean,” he says, because they are and because he doesn’t want her to think they’re not.

“I would hope so,” she says. “Still, the Director believes in warm baths and your blisters need soaking. Sit. I’ll be right back.” He sits in the chair and she is, as she says she would be, right back. She pours a pail of steaming water into a washbasin. “Ready?” she asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, and the touch of her knowing hands as she places his feet, his beautiful feet, in the silky soft water and begins to scrubs his toes, brings another glimpse of his forgotten life, a similarly kind woman in a Friedrichsdorf boardinghouse with a hairpin shaped like a sword who once gave him walnuts and cheese.